Letters from
MINDY
Welcome
Hi, I’m Mindy! And I’m so glad you’re here.
A little bit about me!
I was diagnosed in early 2016 with breast cancer (triple positive stage 2 invasive ductal carcinoma), already in one lymph node at diagnosis. I was 29 and a competitive runner at the time.
Relating with those around me suddenly became out of reach. Many friends were getting married and having babies, yet there I was in treatment for cancer, the visions my then-fiancé (now husband) and I had for our future blurred beyond recognition.
So I began to carve out this little space where I have been sharing my story and my reflections for a number of years now!
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As difficult as it can be to revisit these difficult life events, I’ve found writing helps me to process and let my emotions flow through, out, and around instead of pooling in my heart.
I no longer have cancer, as far as we know. I completed my 5 years of post active treatment endocrine therapies in 2021 and my husband and I are hopeful to be able to begin our family soon, but in the meantime we have loved growing and nurturing the many sweet little babes on our farm here in Missouri!
Professionally, I am a medically based speech language pathologist in my 12th year of practice.
My why, my drive to continue to share my story, will always be the newly diagnosed and those who will be diagnosed in 2 days, 2 weeks, or 2 years-the men and women who find themselves dramatically removed from the lives they know, thrust into the frightening and often isolating world of cancer care.
It’s my hope that sharing imagery of life and living after a cancer diagnosis can serve as a glimmer of hope, a sign that better can be on the horizon!
This is a space I cherish and hold dear, and my dream is to create a soft landing spot for any and all affected by this disease.
I’ve found the beauty of human connection through shared experiences, through community building, can soothe the soul in ways that nothing else can.
Thank you for being here.
To the newly diagnosed with breast cancer....
Hi.
You may not know me yet. You may not know us yet. The fact that you’re reading these words means this message was meant to find you. We were meant to find you, and you, us.
You might be wondering who we are. We are the breast cancer community, a robust support family of love and hope, a sisterhood of solidarity. We will show up for you within seconds of your reach. Together, we will wrap our weathered arms of experience around you and we will hold you close. Never again will you have to feel alone or misunderstood.
Though this path may be wrought with challenges and uncertainty, we want you to know that this *can* be done. And we are here to demonstrate exactly that, that is possible to thrive again.
Our mission is to instill in your heart the peace and belief that this can get better and that there is still joy to be found in every day. It can and it is.
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Please know that your body has not failed you; it just didn’t know how else to tell you something was amiss. Your body is not working against you, but with you. With every pulse and every breath, your body is working to show you that it is working relentlessly, that it can be trusted again.
The hours may be long, but as the only constant in life is time, they will transform into opportunities for betterment. Hold on. Hold fast your faith. Envision your mind and body, healed. Believe it will be.
And know that questions will pop up along the way. New unknowns, most often when you least expect them But answers will be reached and it’s still possible for all to be well, even when you reach long-term survivorship.
Look to us, those that have walked this path before you. Embrace our stories of survivorship. You are us and we are you, existing in the same spaces but in different times and seasons.
We will guide you and we will light the way.
SURVIVORSHIP
HEALING
BODY
RECURRENCE
LIFE
FERTILITY
SURVIVORSHIP
Surviving the First Years After a Breast Cancer
Diagnosis: Holding On Hour by Hour
Diagnosis: Holding On Hour by Hour
No question about it—my first two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer at 29 were my toughest.
And it makes me sad in a way that I wasn’t able to share that here, in real time.
Because I’ve always been drawn to stories and back stories and back back stories, and I feel like that’s where my first few years lie.
Not covered over, not buried within, but instead sitting atop my memories, still so closely linked with the emotions that run through my heart to this day.
In my first few years, I couldn’t even begin to conceptualize what another year out could look like.
All I could grasp was what was within reach, and oftentimes, that was only the hour I was living in at the time.
Crippling anxiety, my body unable to remain still but longing for a rest unattainable.
The hours were long, but ongoing.
Where some might call time a curse when you’re suffering, time was a gift in that I knew it was the constant that would carry me through.
As long as I could hold on.
That became my goal, to hold on, just a little bit longer, to get through this moment and this moment and this.
I would get there.
I am there.
In the now that is nearly 8 years later.
And I will never take one hour—or those two years—for granted
What National Cancer Survivors Day Really
Feels Like: The Truth Beyond the Pink Ribbons
Feels Like: The Truth Beyond the Pink Ribbons
National Cancer Survivors Day hits differently when you or someone you love have heard those three earth shattering words.
The real of it is, many of us are… tired.
The dualities are plenty—
Happy to be here, but emotionally fatigued by every which way this disease tries to instill doubt into the only concept of future that we ever knew.
Many of us don’t feel strong or brave, but we do develop and carry a special kind of fortitude within.
For me, eternal optimism has never really been my thing, but unrelenting hope + faith are totally my jam.
There lies a certain misnomer, that breast cancer survivorship equates to dancing in pink tutus and speaking at every major local event, but I have to tell you, it’s far more enigmatic than that.
There’s grief, of both our unknowns and the unknowns of fellow community members.
There’s mourning the loss of those we’ve grown close with in our own respective walks with disease.
(I miss you so freaking much, Ashley, and I promise you I’ll tell our story soon.)
I encourage you if you know anyone who has heard and lived those three dreaded words, send that random check in text or message, drop that “just because” card in the mail.
I promise you he or she will appreciate that and treasure your thoughtfulness more than you know.
And to my fellow survivor friends, know that we are far more than mere circumstantial survivors.
We are overcomers—still overcoming.
What Being a Cancer Survivor Really Means: The Quiet
Strength Behind Every Day You Keep Going
Strength Behind Every Day You Keep Going
I still get legit nervous af nearly every single time I hit post.
Sometimes I feel like it’s not the popular thing to express feeling okay in survivorship and maybe that makes me unrelatable. I sure hope that’s not the case.
It’s frustrating when I receive DMs where there’s an underlying assumption that things have been rainbows and butterflies for me the whole way through, as though I never struggled. They haven’t. The primary reason I still share my story is to demonstrate that things can and often do get better—much better! 🫶🏻
There are dark clouds in this space and to step out from underneath them has been the most refreshing and rejuvenating experience. Just me, myself, and my chosen circle.
I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am that Spring is nearing. My experience with seasonal affective matters has been more cumbersome than usual this year.
Survivor’s guilt is one of the most real + humbling experiences. It’s really hard to see my friends being rediagnosed here and my heart has been feeling exceptionally heavy for them. So many prayerful nights.
HEALING
Evicting Cancer’s Hold: Reclaiming
Your Mind and Body After a Diagnosis
Your Mind and Body After a Diagnosis
What is the power that cancer has in your life? Is it a space that you permit it to occupy?
This life, this body, they’re yours. This is your house, your home, and you are the only invited occupant.
Cancer—the unwelcome visitor and our body’s greatest trespasser—has a way of not only setting up physical quarters in our bodies but also it works to establish residence in our hearts and minds. The scars, they run deeper than the flesh. Instead, they’re felt beneath… in the thoughts and memories that permeate our days.
But the beautiful thing is… even those deepest cuts can heal. Sure, it takes time. It has taken me years. Though I’ve suffered, I’ve refused to give up. I’ve refused to relinquish my joy and I’ve refused to accept a “new normal” in my own healing process. There are a number of things I’ve said *no* to and slipping below the surface, emotionally, is one… at least for very long.
I’ve recognized the toxic thoughts and I’ve worked fervently to disengage with each, one by one. I’ve attended my own funeral in my mind more times than I can count, and I release this experience, this vision, too. These places are spaces I’ve visited, places where I vow to always remain a passerby. It does not serve me to stand and watch, to experience the pain time and time again.
I release them all.
If you’ve been visiting unsafe memories and wounds in your heart after a cancer diagnosis, please join me in becoming a passerby. Keep walking with me. Don’t stop and let the darkness invite you in. Look in the window if you must, acknowledge its presence, but always keep moving.
Your mind and your body can again be safe spaces. You may not believe it yet, but it’s true. Only you have the power to permit who and what occupies each. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to raise those “No Trespassing” signs.
Maybe it’s time to evict those that don’t belong… and to release that which does not serve you.
Stop Asking What Caused My Cancer: Why
Blame Has No Place in a Survivor’s Story
Blame Has No Place in a Survivor’s Story
Nope, never stuck my phone in my bra.
Didn’t stand next to the microwave.
Never used a heating pad.
Didn’t smoke, only drank occasionally.
And no, I didn’t live on processed foods.
Cancer fam 🗣️ How often do we begin to share our stories and then feel immediately bombarded with questions as to whether we did xyz pre-diagnosis?
A nervous interrogation, if you will.
(I am not at all suggesting those practices to be causative but rather they’re often the first things others think to ask.)
How quickly does it begin to feel like said person asking isn’t trying to problem our cases but instead 👀 attempting to Sherlock Holmes what he/she can do to prevent being in our shoes?
Oftentimes, the questioner has zero concept of how hurtful these inquiries can be, nor is the person aware he or she is indirectly suggesting it’s possible we caused our own cancers.
And ohh does it smart.
✨Friends in the cancer space, nothing ✍🏻 you ✍🏻 did ✍🏻 caused ✍🏻 your ✍🏻 cancer.✨
The hard truth that many outside this community have a hard time grasping is that sometimes our cells are jerks.
Sometimes our cells just f*ck up.
And that is not your fault, not my fault, and not anyone’s fault.
Sometimes our circumstances are exactly that—circumstances—and the healthiest, gentlest thing we can do for our minds, our hearts, our bodies is to show ourselves grace.
Because there is something freeing in forgiving our bodies for changing, in the revelation that cancer happened *to* us and not a sign of body failure.
If any of this resonates with you, please consider sharing. Building an awareness outside the cancer community of how deeply troubling these questions can be is an education piece and thinking point that should be considered when interacting with one who has experienced a cancer diagnosis.
From Diagnosis to Healing: How My Stage 2 Breast
Cancer Changed Everything—Then Gave Me Back More
Cancer Changed Everything—Then Gave Me Back More
It was this very time of year 9 years ago when I first felt what I would later learn to be a very angry stage 2 malignant mass in my left breast.
A small busted woman to begin with, this rock of a lump felt entirely abnormal and concerning. Foreign. Not my own.
While my hope and my prayer was for it to be explained away as a cyst, it was described instead as a cancer that would completely halt and shift the trajectory of my life and everything as I knew it.
And during the hardship that enveloped the days, months, and years of chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries, and endocrine therapies, there always remained a little light.
A light that always outshined the darkness, a flicker of hope and a glimmer that promised a peace that would lie ahead, though I could never see it as clearly and definitively as I had hoped.
But tying the proverbial knot in the lifeline of a rope I was given by my medical team, I held on and I held on some more.
The thing about time, it doesn’t stop.
A blessing and a curse, time, when coupled with a bit of stubbornness and tenacity (and a bit of unrelenting hope), was everything I needed to find my way the very moment these words leave my fingertips.
To even dream of purchasing land and building a home + a farm with so many lovable new little family members was incomprehensible to me.
If you’re in the thick of it, whether newly diagnosed or months, years deep into it yourself, my every wish is for you to be able to stumble across my story.
Because many times, it really does wind up being okay, and more than okay, it can be transformatively better—great, actually.
Peaceful. Calm. Renewed.
If you can identify with any of this, hang in there, friend. I promise it’s worth it.
BODY
My Cancer Was Not My Fault: Learning to
Trust My Body Again After Diagnosis
Trust My Body Again After Diagnosis
My body is for me, not against me.
My body has sustained and maintained me.
My body is my home.
My unformidable vessel of hope.
And while the walls might waver, my foundation is firmly set.
Because when the sides do shake, the ground beneath me is always there.
For me to find again.
And no one will ever convince me that my diet or my detergent made my cells go Thelma and Louise on me.
Because my cancer happened *to* me.
Not because of me.
My circumstances are not my fault.
And neither are yours.
The Day I Reclaimed Myself: Life After
Hair Loss and Breast Cancer Treatment
Hair Loss and Breast Cancer Treatment
The day I took a leap of faith, but not the type you’re thinking.
My turning point in how I would move forward, the very day in time I proved myself right.
It was the day I learned I was more than the long blonde hair that once framed my face and decorated my shoulders.
The first day in over 7 months that I chose to to leave my wig, my simulation of my healthy self, in the car.
My first day trusting my deconditioned body on the rugged terrain of the trails, the leaves again under my feet.
My first day letting go of every safe space that had supported my body’s ability to feel even a marginal degree of comfort since before I heard those three words.
The day that I said I could, and did.
A day that will forever remain symbolic and prolific, the day I learned that maybe there is life and living after the brunt of this cancer thing after all.
And maybe I can make it mine again.
I relive this day every day.
Reclaiming Life After Cancer: Learning to
Trust Your Body Again
Trust Your Body Again
A commanding presence, the dominant force in the room.
Every facet of its darkness dictated my every move, my every decision based upon its mood, the wrath it felt like delivering on any given day.
But with healing of my body came the need for healing of my mind, my spirit, my self.
The cancer may have become no longer but the crater it left behind was becoming more ominous.
I sat with it and I sat in it, feeling it all and gaining an awareness I was alive but not living.
A shift had to take place.
I began to treat cancer as the unwelcome passerby, no longer the resident within.
I viewed cancer as something that happened *to* my body, not a failure of my body itself.
Because if I couldn’t discover how to love and trust my body—my home—again, then what was the point of the suffering to get there?
With great respect to those in the metastatic community, it only felt right to embrace and be grateful for my renewed state of health and for as long as I’m able to do so.
Because we are all aware of how quickly everything can change, my having become increasingly aware of this with a number of my own patients admitted to our facility with breast cancer recurrences many years out, their stories remaining a source of grounding and gratitude in my own life.
If cancer remains a dark force in the room you occupy, never lose hope that it can become a passerby, its seat at the table relinquished and filled only by those whom we welcome.
RECURRENCE
Healing from cancer emotionally
What is the power that cancer has in your life? Is it a space that you permit it to occupy?
This life, this body, they’re yours. This is your house, your home, and you are the only invited occupant.
Cancer—the unwelcome visitor and our body’s greatest trespasser—has a way of not only setting up physical quarters in our bodies but also it works to establish residence in our hearts and minds. The scars, they run deeper than the flesh. Instead, they’re felt beneath… in the thoughts and memories that permeate our days.
But the beautiful thing is… even those deepest cuts can heal. Sure, it takes time. It has taken me years. Though I’ve suffered, I’ve refused to give up. I’ve refused to relinquish my joy and I’ve refused to accept a “new normal” in my own healing process. There are a number of things I’ve said *no* to and slipping below the surface, emotionally, is one… at least for very long.
I’ve recognized the toxic thoughts and I’ve worked fervently to disengage with each, one by one. I’ve attended my own funeral in my mind more times than I can count, and I release this experience, this vision, too. These places are spaces I’ve visited, places where I vow to always remain a passerby. It does not serve me to stand and watch, to experience the pain time and time again.
I release them all.
If you’ve been visiting unsafe memories and wounds in your heart after a cancer diagnosis, please join me in becoming a passerby. Keep walking with me. Don’t stop and let the darkness invite you in. Look in the window if you must, acknowledge its presence, but always keep moving.
Your mind and your body can again be safe spaces. You may not believe it yet, but it’s true. Only you have the power to permit who and what occupies each. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to raise those “No Trespassing” signs.
Maybe it’s time to evict those that don’t belong… and to release that which does not serve you.
Living Beyond the Fear of Recurrence:
Embracing the Present After Breast Cancer
Embracing the Present After Breast Cancer
While recurrence does not equate to death, I lived in that fear space—that abyss of sheer terror—for years, convinced every ache or pain was my cancer, back again to greet me with open arms and open claws.
Though my own exit stage left on this earth would have certainly been the outcome had I not initiated and sought care in the timeframe that I did, my own death didn’t happen. And neither has recurrence.
And while I seek medical attention to ensure these occurrences can be explained via other means, I recognize that the body is a complex vessel, and benign, incidental findings will happen.
So while I’m here today cancer-free as we know it, I’m going to enjoy that.
The truth we all know here in this community is that can change at any moment. Our cherished brothers and sisters in the metastatic community would and *do* want us to celebrate the healing our bodies and medical teams have worked so hard to achieve, as many have shared with me personally. They would not want us to dampen our triumphs because we support one another in all seasons.
Time is precious and moments are fleeting. For the time period that this renewed health is mine, I’m going to run with it. I’m going to put the life in living and I’m going to deny cancer another opportunity to to try to take my joy.
You see, those of us in the remission, NED, or cancer-free states of being have so much to be grateful for. The path to this space might have been grueling, but here we are—doing some of the things, doing all of the things.
And to what benefit does it serve us to spend this cherished time putting ourselves through additional traumatic events that haven’t happened?
While recurrence is a real and scary thing, honor yourself for the beast you’re overcoming. Pause with me. Feel this moment, and this one and this one and this. Enjoy this place you’ve put in all the grit and tears to reach.
Survivorship is tough; we don’t have to allow it to be any tougher.
Living Beyond the Fear of Recurrence:
Embracing the Present After Breast Cancer
Embracing the Present After Breast Cancer
While recurrence does not equate to death, I lived in that fear space—that abyss of sheer terror—for years, convinced every ache or pain was my cancer, back again to greet me with open arms and open claws.
Though my own exit stage left on this earth would have certainly been the outcome had I not initiated and sought care in the timeframe that I did, my own death didn’t happen. And neither has recurrence.
And while I seek medical attention to ensure these occurrences can be explained via other means, I recognize that the body is a complex vessel, and benign, incidental findings will happen.
So while I’m here today cancer-free as we know it, I’m going to enjoy that.
The truth we all know here in this community is that can change at any moment. Our cherished brothers and sisters in the metastatic community would and *do* want us to celebrate the healing our bodies and medical teams have worked so hard to achieve, as many have shared with me personally. They would not want us to dampen our triumphs because we support one another in all seasons.
Time is precious and moments are fleeting. For the time period that this renewed health is mine, I’m going to run with it. I’m going to put the life in living and I’m going to deny cancer another opportunity to to try to take my joy.
You see, those of us in the remission, NED, or cancer-free states of being have so much to be grateful for. The path to this space might have been grueling, but here we are—doing some of the things, doing all of the things.
And to what benefit does it serve us to spend this cherished time putting ourselves through additional traumatic events that haven’t happened?
While recurrence is a real and scary thing, honor yourself for the beast you’re overcoming. Pause with me. Feel this moment, and this one and this one and this. Enjoy this place you’ve put in all the grit and tears to reach.
Survivorship is tough; we don’t have to allow it to be any tougher.
LIFE
Why Not Us. Why Not Now.
I’ve decided that there’s really no tomorrow.
There’s only today. And if tomorrow happens by chance, I’m here for it. And I’ll be there.
But for now, I’m showing up for myself in a new way.
It doesn’t matter how tough something was yesterday, all I have is now, this moment, and this moment and this moment and this.
It doesn’t matter if I’m running in 6 or 86 degrees, if I run home or if I crawl home.
We can prove our circumstances wrong any day.
The more I sit and overthink, the more opportunities I relinquish.
This is my season of leaving comfort zones and routines of old behind, leaning into the tough and digging deeper.
Because no one can rebuild this house but me.
Here, now, today.
This life after cancer thing hasn’t come easily, but if you’re standing, walking, or running beside me, I see you and I thank you.
We already have everything it takes.
So why not us?
And why not now?
Finishing Endocrine Therapy: Gratitude,
Side Effects, and the Power of Treating Yourself
Side Effects, and the Power of Treating Yourself
The very night I took my final pill after 5 years of Anastrozole, the side-effect laden daily medication I took to aid in preventing my estrogen receptor positive breast cancer from returning.
And earlier that same day, I had received my last of 66 giant Zoladex injections.
My final Zoladex day, the day that served as the very inspiration for and inception of the “Treat Yourself” tradition that many of my lovely friends here still honor and practice.
Because treating yourself really is much bigger than a pink drink; rather, it’s symbolic of the tough and all that we volitionally do during our respective walks with cancer and even in the years that follow.
We do hard things here, and if we can instill a practice that helps to dampen the anxiety and dread for the day and replace that with even the tiniest bit of excitement, of joy, then it’s worth it.
And the endocrine therapies we endure, what a blessing they are that we have these as options.
I’ll never forget the evening I was sitting at a quiet dinner with my dearest friend who has been my big sister and mentor since only days after my diagnosis.
She had triple negative breast cancer, a form without similarly acting powerful anti-recurrence medications like a number of the endocrine therapies for which others of us are candidates.
But my friend sharing with me that night that she wished she had these options… changed everything for me.
I immediately shifted my perspective to one of gratitude and deep appreciation.
If you are in the throes of trying to build the endurance to take today’s pill, know that so many of us know and have experienced the same daily push-pull and we are with you.
And we are here to encourage you, to guide you, and to support you every step of the way.
Embracing a Second Chance:
Turning Cancer Survival into a Life Fully Lived
Turning Cancer Survival into a Life Fully Lived
Just when we feel stuck, something can begin to stir within us.
A desire for more, an urge to live a little louder, a little unbridled, all felt from under the surface.
A dream of creating something new.
A new core memory, a new legacy, a treasure that may be here longer than we are.
A new story, a new path, a new vantage point.
The art of creating novelty with intention, capturing ideas and seeing them through and with reckless abandon.
That’s what living has become for me.
Making every moment count, every opportunity for joy realized.
Because if there’s ever a time in this bonus life, this second chance after cancer, where the sun might not shine so brightly, I don’t want to look back in regret, in remorse—in sadness.
I don’t want to grieve a life not lived.
If you’re feeling stuck, do the thing you never thought you could do.
Surprise yourself.
Plan that trip. Go to that place. Have that conversation. Nurture that connection but refine your circle. Build that thing. Plant that seed. And water it daily.
Because maybe this is your growth season.
Maybe you just didn’t know that you don’t have to settle for ho-hum, for mediocre, for satisfactory.
And maybe flourishing is right there. Within reach. Closer than you knew. Because why not us? And why not now?
FERTILITY
Fertility After Breast Cancer: Finding Peace When the Path Looks Different
Merely one of the very real and life altering struggles that many of us know all too well here.
We survived cancer—
These are supposed to be the years where our lives, our prior plans and dreams, reignite and come back to life.
We often approach this time with the highest of hopes, with such belief that our families can still grow in a biological sense.
We’re cleared medically, then time ticks on and nothing happens.
We attend baby showers and children’s birthday parties, but never our own.
While some may choose to consult with fertility specialists and/or pursue alternative methods, some of us choose not to.
We’re tired. That deep, exhausted at our cores type of tired.
The emotional toll of disease has been taken and the fire to pursue yet another major medical endeavor just isn’t what it once was.
And so we begin to explore acceptance—radical acceptance—and we discover that life can still be beautiful and satisfying, purpose driven and fulfilling, on this new course.
We learn it’s okay. We don’t have to abide by societal norms nor do we have to rise to meet the expectations of others.
We discover peace, the perfection in the embers, the glimmers that remind us of all that we have overcome and continue to overcome.
Our families are whole and full, complete and treasured as they are.
And the light that burns on, the life that continues to stir inside us, guides us into our fresh start, our space of new hopes and dreams ready to be realized.
Fertility After Cancer: Embracing Radical Acceptance and Redefining What Family Means
Can we talk about radical acceptance for a minute?
I was recently in a very okay situation where I was asked straightforwardly what the status of family planning is between my husband and I.
I promise it was respectful, relevant to the occasion.
But I shared my truth, a truth my husband and I share—
That nothing has come to fruition.
That our family is complete already.
That another human would be purely a bonus.
That we currently have everything we need and more.
We always have.
This page holds a very special place in my heart—because it’s exactly what I needed when I was first diagnosed. A place to feel understood. A place to cry, to reflect, to hope. A place to feel held. And I am endlessly grateful to Mindy for helping me bring that vision to life.
Mindy is more than an emotional contributor for Learn Look Locate—she has been with me since the very beginning. From day one, we’ve shared a rare and beautiful bond, built on trust, healing, and the shared belief that no one should face this journey alone.
